(AP) Suspects in 2006 terror plot, pictured in top row, (left to right): Tanvir Hussain, Assad Sarwar, Umar Islam, Waheed Zaman. Bottom row (left to right): Mohammed Gulzar, Arafat Waheed Khan, Ibrahim Savant and Abdul Ali.

I stared into the alleged faces of terror today … and they didn’t care.They were the eight British Muslim men charged with plotting to blow up planes heading from London to the States … apparently to kill all on board. “All,” according to the British prosecutor, “in the name of Islam.”

The prosecutor went on to say that the eight were “indifferent” to the possible huge civilian casualties their political statement would make. You could tell that from their body language. As I watched via closed circuit video in a room next to the Woolwich Crown Court House in east London, they sat expressionless, even bored.

The testimony today was anything but boring, though. While there’s been much reported on the plot since it was broken up in August 2006, some of it has been secondhand and some of it hasn’t come out at all.

Like the fact that as many 18 planes were possibly going to be targeted by the alleged terrorists, almost all headed for the U.S. from London, to places like New York, Chicago, Denver and San Francisco. When one of the suspects was asked by authorities why detailed information about flights to the U.S. was loaded onto his zip drive he is reported to have said, “Oh they’re U.S. holiday destinations.” Some holiday.

And the U.K. investigators did the ugly math for us. The planes chosen by the suspects carried on average 260 passengers and crew. There is strong reason to believe that they were intended to be blown up over U.S. soil, multiplying the casualty toll. Which means that some five years after 9/11, it is charged that some very bad people were trying to come up with a death toll even bigger than the 2001 tragedy.

Perhaps the most haunting bit of today’s testimony was the description of how the suspects were allegedly going to blow the planes up — not with sophisticated bombs, but with crude, easy to make improvised explosive devices. Small health drink bottles, filled with hydrogen peroxide you can buy in a drug store, plus — get this — orange flavored Tang powder (”It makes a very energetic mix,” the prosecutor noted.)

And these bottles of explosives were going to be detonated using a simple AA battery stuck to the bottle using (perhaps) … chewing gum.

Another new piece of information that emerged today was that the police apparently got to the gang just in time. The flights highlighted for destruction were said to operate between August 2nd through the end of October 2006, and the suspects were nabbed August 10th.

All of us who use air travel still feel the effects of this thwarted terror attack whenever we travel. Restrictions on liquids and carry-ons persist today. After listening to exactly what these men were allegedly planning to have happen, security efforts at airports that often seem like overkill now seem much more reasonable.

And the defendants? They filed pleas of “not guilty” to the charges. Their team of lawyers already no doubt making their own plots regarding how they can try to shoot down the government’s allegations.

At the end of the day, the eight filed out of courthouse, their individual security guards in tow. They no doubt took a tunnel from the court to the super high security Belmarsh prison next door, where top terror suspects are usually kept in England, nicely tucked away from the rest of the civilized world. Just in case what the government alleged today … turns out to be true.